Tech Grill: Episode 1, Tablet talk

The Tech Grill is a new project for the Tech Broiler blog that Jason Perlow and I have been working on. We're going to collect interesting conversations and brainstorming sessions and format them into blog articles. In the future, we plan on using these as the basis for accompanying podcasts.

Note: This conversation took place shortly after the iPad 2 launch, a few weeks prior to the Sendai earthquake.

Jason Perlow: the problem is, Apple built up a biz over 10 years on consumer electronics and now has their supply chain and cash reserve that permits them to make volume commitments at 10M+ Q parts up front and own their inventory

Jason Perlow: nobody else can do that. MAYBE Amazon might be able to do that. SONY could do this, if they got past their long standing objections to using Korean and Chinese manufacturing. anything they build in japan is gonna cost too much.

Scott Raymond: Others could match Apple's strategy and don't. Samsung could; they manufacture their own components. If anything their tablets should be the cheapest.

Jason Perlow: yeah but see with Samsung almost certainly Apple actually bought their own piece of the assembly line with their own equipment so they cant use what they contract for Apple.

Scott Raymond: B&N has a $250 capacitive touch 7" 800mhz tablet. It can run honeycomb.